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The Juvenile Revival; 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR 
MOVEMENT. 



y 



By THOMAS CHALMERS, Ph.D., 

Pastor of the Church of Christ, Brooklyn, N. TL 
Author of ''•Alexander Campbell in Scotland." 



WITH M INTRODUCTION BY FRANCIS E. CLARK, D. D. 



" Like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth 
forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither." 




St. Louis: 
CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

1893. 



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Copyrighted, 1893, by 
Christian Publishing Company. 




CONTENTS. 



Introduction . . . . .5 

I. The Soil . . . . 7 

II. The Season . . . 29 

III. The Seed .... 49 

IY. The Blade . . . . 73 

Y. The Ear .... 97 

VI. The Full Corn ... . .117 
C3) 



INTRODUCTION. 



So far as I have been able to examine the 
advance sheets of this volume, I am glad to 
heartily express my appreciation of its usefulness 
and unique value. The Society of Christian En- 
deavor is very often looked at from the practical 
standpoint, and its actual workings from all sides 
have been examined, criticised, defended, and 
for the most part cordially commended, by pas- 
tors and Christian people in all parts of the coun- 
try. The time has now come, as it seems to me, 
for more careful examination of the philosophical 
principles which underlie the movement. Any 
such organization, which in eleven years has 
made its way around the world, and numbers 
among its members nearly a million and a half 
young people, must have some springs of vitality 
which do not always bubble to the surface. There 
must be some underlying principles on which 

such a movement rests. It cannot be accounted 
(5) 



INTRODUCTION. 



for by the gush of youthful enthusiasm. Every 
religious uprising in the history of the world has 
had such principles, and though they have not 
always, been clearly apprehended at the begin- 
ning, and though the practical necessities have 
largely overshadowed the philosophical princi- 
ples on which the movement was based, these 
principles nevertheless exist. So it is witfh the 
Society of Christian Endeavor, and it is well that 
from the standpoint of an active pastor, who 
knows experimentally what the society is, what 
its aims, purposes, methods and tendencies are, 
such a volume should be written. The philoso- 
phy then becomes something more than mere 
theory. A priori reasoning is balanced by practi- 
cal experience, and the experience confirms and 
is confirmed by the underlying philosophy. 
Many will doubtless be interested by such a pre- 
sentation of the case who might distrust the 
merely practical exhibit of the working of a sin- 
gle society. I believe the volume is calculated to 
do much good, and I wish it every success in 
advancing the cause the author has so warmly at 
heart, and which he has here so wisely espoused 

and commended. 

Francis E. Clark. 
Boston, Mass., 



THE SOIL. 



" It was planted in a goodly soil by great waters, that it 
might bring forth branches, and that it might bear fruit, 
that it might be a goodly vine."— Ezekiel. 



"I hail the young life of our day in religion." 

—Dr. McCosh. 



" Ce qui maitrise le plus fortement ces jeunes intelligen- 
ces, c'est l'instinct de la relation entre less choses et des 
racines profondes qu'elles out dans Pinvisible; c'est le sen- 
timent de la solidarite entre les hommes, le besoin de 
s'associer a cette universelle vibration humaine qui est 
l'electricite latente du monde moral."— Vogue's Regards. 



I. 

THE SOIL. 

A spiritual plant that has grown in but 
-**• little more than a decade from a sin - 
gle sprout until its young but giant 
branches bear the bursting buds of more 
than a million souls, must have been for- 
tunate, not alone in its planting and cul- 
ture, but in the good ground from which 
it sprang. Its fresh and luxuriant vegeta- 
tion gives evidence as much of the fer- 
tility of the soil, as its own structure gives 
of its species. The soil into which the 
seed of Christian Endeavor was cast must 
have been of rich quality. That soil is 
youthful religious enthusiasm. It is the 
first and most important objective condi- 
tion in the marvelous spread of the Chris- 
tian Endeavor idea. But this suscepti- 
bility to religious impression among the 
young has always existed. From the dav 
(9) 



10 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

that Cain and Abel, the first young men, 
sacrificed to Jehovah of the first fruits of 
their industry and devotion, no element 
in human nature has been more evident 
than juvenile religious enthusiasm — the 
soil of Christian Endeavor. But the idea 
or the seed which was planted in this soil 
has been but recently generated. It 
sprang up when the conditions and ele- 
ments united to produce the germination. 
The time had come when this young en- 
thusiasm should be turned into a newer 
and purer channel to enrich and irrigate 
more promising fields in the broad area of 
the life of the young. Juvenile enthusi- 
asm may then either be compared to the 
soil, which has existed from the founda- 
tion of the world, or the waters which 
fertilize; the Christian Endeavor idea, 
either to the seed which grows from the 
soil, or the channel which gives direction 
to the stream. The philosophy of the 
Christian Endeavor phenomenon cannot 
be comprehended fully without a prelim- 
inary study of the characteristics and pos- 
sibilities of the young mind, as actually 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 11 

shown in a glance over the history of past 
movements. The revolutions and con- 
vulsions of history, the combined results 
of which have given us our present struct- 
ure of society, have been, almost without 
exception, inspired by the zeal and carried 
onward by the activity of our young men. 
In the military, political, literary, scien- 
tific and religious departments of life, it 
is the burning, restless spirit of youth 
which has torn down national walls, 
amalgamated races, crossed the Alps, re- 
constructed theology, revolutionized soci- 
ety, literature and science, and then in its 
unsatisfied and insatiable fire it has wept 
over the ruins of conquered worlds for 
other worlds of activity. From Alexan- 
der the Great, who led the Macedonian 
army at the age of seventeen, to Napoleon 
Bonaparte, who was the greatest general 
in Europe at the age of twenty-six, the 
chief warriors of the world were young 
men; from the boyish Augustus Caesar, 
whose wise constructive statesmanship 
made his reign the memorable Golden 
Era of Rome, to the younger Pitt, who 



12 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

was Europe's shrewdest statesman when 
but twenty-five years old, youth has made 
its activity no less felt in politics than in 
war. Calvin laid the basis for the theo- 
logic thought of more than half the Prot- 
estant world when at the age of twenty- 
five he wrote his Institutes; and it may 
not be irreverent to remember that the 
Man of Nazareth was but little more than 
a youth when he said "It is finished" to 
a life that has changed the face of hu- 
manity and given us a new heaven and a 
new earth. In our own day the greatest 
religious movements have begun and 
grown into power among the young. The 
Evangelical movement of the eighteenth 
century, and the Tractarian movement of 
our own century, had each its origin in 
the religious fervor of Oxford students. 
Martin Luther was but thirty-four years 
old when the signal for the beginning of 
the Protestant revulsion was sounded by 
the hammer that nailed the ninety-five 
theses on the door of the Castle-church in 
Wittenberg. John Huss was under forty 
and Savonarola under forty-six when they 



THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 13 

died as martyrs to their religious princi- 
ples after lives full of labors. 

We often hear it said that young people 
are by nature not religious. Nothing can 
be farther from the truth. What is that 
pure, disinterested, fervent honesty, the 
only normal condition of youth; that 
chivalric devotion to reason and right; 
that faithfulness to truth as seen, which 
often breaks over the boundaries of 
parental theology, even at the cost of dis- 
inheritance, that pleads the interests of 
an unpopular cause and disregards the 
jeers of unsympathetic multitudes — what 
is that but religion? It may grow restless 
and fall asleep under an abstruse discus- 
sion on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; 
it may smile at the oddities of ritualism; 
it may never have read a written sermon, 
or made a formal prayer, or carefully 
studied a Scripture passage, but this is no 
ground for inferring that youth is lacking 
in religious sentiment. It is the very 
warmth of the religious nature, its de- 
mand for a living ideal, that rebels against 
the cold and dry elements in church life. 



14 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

What shall we call that openness of mind 
to new revelations of truth ; that suscep- 
tibility to conviction ; that headlong pur- 
suit of what is real, which never mercena- 
rily counts the cost, but goes forward as 
if moved by the spirit — what is that but 
religion? These are the characteristics of 
religion, and they are the characteristics 
of youth. Youth has always been relig- 
ious, but the juvenile religious element 
has seldom been recognized or under- 
stood, and there has therefore been but 
little provision for its cultivation, and its 
surplus force and vitality have been 
wasted for want of proper channels in 
which to exert themselves, and even when 
channels have been provided, they have 
often been so narrow and shallow that 
they could not bear the cargoes of a rich 
and full life. Youth must have legitimate 
service in which to expend its force, or it 
will expend itself in its own dissipation or 
in outside destruction. It is like the oxy- 
gen which, if received into the lungs, re- 
pairs, warms and vitalizes the system; but 
if it is shut out, the body dies, and the 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 15 

same oxygen employs itself in its disinte- 
gration. 

Lectures to young men, in which the 
best and most prof usive advice has been 
given of what not to do and what to 
avoid, from the days of Solomon to the 
last volumes issued from the press, have 
been well nigh fruitless. We cannot won- 
der, when the young men of every age 
have been overwhelmed with moraliza- 
tions— ''Don't do this!" " Don't go 
there! " "Don't associate with such! " — 
that they have answered in despair, "In 
the name of Grod, what shall we do, where 
shall we go, and with whom shall we asso- 
ciate? " When Shakespeare's Henry IV. 
is represented by Falstaff as speaking 
those kind words of reproof to his son, 
" Harry, I do not only marvel where thou 
spendest thy time, but also how thou art 
accompanied; for though the camomile 
the more it is trodden on the faster it 
grows, yet youth the more it is wasted the 
sooner it wears," he gave good parental 
counsel, but the effect of the rebuke 
alone would drive the youth into despair 



16 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

and further profligacy. It was negative 
truth. But when the activity of war was 
offered him, this dissipated youth rose 

" From the ground like feathered Mercury," 

and, in the hottest of th^ battle, slew the 
gallant leader of the Northern rebellion, 
and when the king begged him to leave 
the field on account of his wound, it was 
that same youthful ardor, which a few 
days before was wasted in drunkenness 
and revelry, that made the valorous re- 
sponse: 

" God forbid a shallow scratch should 
drive the Prince of Wales from such a 
field as this, where stained nobility lies 
trodden on, and rebels' arms triumph in 
massacres! " Youth longs for noble and 
legitimate activity, but the flow of its en- 
thusiasm cannot be dammed without dis- 
aster. Once upon a time an industrious 
farmer, through whose small but well 
planted farm a river ran, took it into his 
head to increase the area of his arable 
land; so he dammed the river just outside 
the boundary fence. On the following 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 17 

morning when he went out, he found that 
the waters had kept on flowing as before 
from above, and had flooded and ruined 
his crops on the lowlands. He removed 
the dam, and in the course of time built a 
flour-mill on the banks of the river, and 
'the great waterwheel drove the machin- 
ery. His neighbors from miles away 
brought their grain to his mill, and he 
grew into great wealth. The water could 
not be held back, but it would grind his 
grain, saw his lumber, carry his cargo, and 
quench his thirst. So it is with youth. 

We may as well, then, lay down as a 
proposition at once that youth cannot be 
silenced while it is youth. Take its 
vivacity away, and it is no longer youth. 
Someone suggests, "Discipline it! " But 
the trouble is too often that the disciplin- 
ing process is a destroying, a death-deal- 
ing process. Disciplined youth is usually 
as unpromising of fruit as the frost-bitten 
bud. The broken spirit, the downcast 
eye, the pallid complexion, the fallen 
countenance, the slow and regular gait, 

the nervous lack of self-confidence — these 

2 



18 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

are too often the traces of discipline. It 
is the bounding step, the sparkling luster 
of the eye, the quick and willing motion 
that we want. In the words of Tennyson : 

" 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
And life not death for which we pant- 
More life and fuller that we want," 

"Spare not the rod" is a good word, and 
should be taken literally. As far as the 
rod is concerned, it does not need sparing. 
It may be burned or broken with but little 
loss to human happiness; but the child 
should be spared. It is, of course, much 
easier for parents to handle their children 
summarily according to "rules laid 
down," than to trouble themselves with 
studying sympathetically the nature of 
the child's soul and surroundings, but is 
it not the human way? No doubt many 
will object to a condescension of parent to 
child as compromising parental dignity, 
but what is parental dignity? Is it that 
cold, hard, lofty separation of father from 
son which has often deprived youth of 
one of its greatest natural blessings? 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 19 

While we are talking about the rights of 
man, woman's rights, the rights of labor 
and capital, and States' rights, we should 
not forget that there is also sucha doc- 
trine as juvenile rights, and if the young 
are to be instructed by the old, it should 
also be remembered that the old may 
learn much from the young, and this even 
in religious matters. Is it not "out of 
the mouths of babes and sucklings" that 
divine praise finds its most perfect ex- 
pression? 

But a very natural inquiry would be if 
youth should be let run wild and go down 
to ruin? There certainly is no need that 
youth should go wild. That is the oppo- 
site error — the falsehood carried about by 
the emissaries of Satan, who have 
preached from Adam's time that there is 
a certain merit in the eating of forbidden 
fruit, and that free men should live under 
no restraint. There is no reason why any 
young man, though perfectly free, should 
sow tares or wild oats. Those tares are 
more ruinous to the soil of youth and sap 
from it more of its fertility and power 



20 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

than the growth of the grain of legiti- 
mate activity. That philosophy is corrupt 
and vicious beyond toleration which ac- 
cords to young men their youthful years 
for dissipation and dissolution, and no 
young man who has the courage of man- 
hood or even ordinary prudence or fore- 
sight will accept such a proffer. To be 
sure, the soil will grow something. If no 
good seed is sown, rank weeds and pois- 
onous herbs will find their way there, if it 
has any fertility ; and if it has no fertility 
at all, it is as useless to the world as the 
Sahara desert. A man who can be a first 
class sinner can be something better. 
The soil that will grow weeds in healthy 
quantities is a promising piece of land. 
When our farmers go out West to take 
up government land and settle there, they 
avoid the dry, desert patches where there 
is neither tree, shrub nor weed — nothing 
but the clear, white drifting sand, — and 
lay claim to the rougher ground, where 
weeds in abundance grow. It took " the 
Chief of Sinners" to make the Chief of 
the Apostles. And yet I know just such 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 21 

talk as this often exercises a pernicious 
influence on the very characters we are 
trying to help. The street tough who 
hears it will tip his dented hat further on 
one side, and, with his hands in his side 
pockets, he will walk down street with a 
still more self-conscious swagger. He 
will drink an extra glass and make a big- 
ger stake at the gambling-table. He will 
swear a louder oath, and make bolder al- 
lusion to the lady that passes by the dry 
goods box on which he sits. He will 
take it that there is merit in depravity. 
He will not compare himself to a crude, 
uncultivated patch of land overrun with 
malodorous fireweeds, troublesome this- 
tles and exasperating briers. Yet, wild 
as it is, the ground has promise, but if it 
remains always in its native uncultivated 
state, it matters little whether it has or 
has not promise. So with the sinner, his 
very sinfulness, which gives promise of 
something better and worthier after his 
reformation, makes him, as a sinner, con- 
temptible and disgusting. 

Man will not be idle. He will serve 



22 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

either God or Mammon. Nor have we 
discharged our whole duty when we say: 
" Choose ye this day whom ye will serve," 
because church life is oftentimes such 
that the young man, with his limited re- 
ligious experience, can see no other ser- 
vice but that of Mammon. There must 
be a choice before the young man can 
choose. Mammon has all his wares on 
exhibition. The gilded saloon, with its 
odorous and tempting liquors, cards, dice 
and billiard-tables meets him at every 
corner. The dazzling theatre, with its 
throng of frivolous and careless attend- 
ants, its insinuatingly immoral plays and 
' ' varieties, ' ? and sensational costumes 
calls out loudly through its advertise- 
ments in flaming pictures on wagons, 
buildings, fences, and bulletin boards for 
the young man's bid. The great majority 
of the depraved have not chosen sin from 
preference. They have chosen it from 
necessity, because church life was either 
practically out of their reach, or so crys- 
tallized and cold that it possessed no 
charms for them. The preaching has 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 23 

been abstract, and the prayer and social 
meetings have been insipid and uninter- 
esting, and instead of being greeted by 
young people of their own age when they 
appear within the church, they have been 
recognized and addressed only by the eld- 
ers or the old ladies. They have been nat- 
urally shy and backward, just as they were 
the first evening they spent in the loud 
and jolly saloon company, but the latter 
companionship soon put them at their 
ease. In a recent article in the Forum 
on the " Impending Paganism in New 
England," the following picture of the 
church life in a little New England town 
is given: "The strongest churches are 
the Universalist, with its membership of 
thirteen women, and one man, and the 
Congregational, with its membership of 
twenty-seven women and four men. 
There is hardly a representative man in 
these four churches, though the Masonic 
lodge gathers from this and neighboring 
towns its hundred members." The fault 
is not in the soil but in its cultivation. 
I repeat that the young are religious, 



24 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

and any form of religion justifies itself in 
proportion as it appeals to the juvenile re- 
ligious sense . And with or without any rec- 
ognized form of religion, the young mind 
will cling to fundamental religious prin- 
ciples. It is through the youth of France 
that the recent much-spoken-of Neo- 
Christian Movement is giving its greatest 
promise. M. Vogue, as already quoted, 
says that " that which strongly holds 
these young minds is the instinct of the 
correspondence between material things 
and the profound invisible principles 
which underlie them; it is the feeling of 
community between men, the need of so- 
ciety according to that universal human 
vibration which is the latent electricity of 
the moral world." This exhibits the very 
spirit of the Christian religion, and it 
comes as an unintentional and powerful 
argument for its adaptability to the hu- 
man race. These young minds which 
had .inherited a prejudice to Christianity 
from the infidel philosophy of the pre- 
ceding generation, have, by a circuitous 
journey, impelled by their own innate im- 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 25 

pulses, and guided by their own reason, 
unconsciously returned to the underlying 
principles of the Christian faith. This is 
the kind of a movement needed in 
France. The editor of one of our Amer- 
ican magazines sends up a lamentation 
over the comparative barrenness of our 
own land in such spiritual growths: 
"The feeling of the serious American," 
says he, " as he drops the record of this 
wonderful spiritualization of thought in 
France, this new birth of a nation, and 
he turns his thought home, is a feeling of 
sadness. There is no movement akin to 
this in our intellectual life." There is 
no such movement because no such move- 
ment is demanded in American life. But 
have we not a movement? — such a one as 
we need? — a movement against material- 
ism to a higher spiritual and religious 
life? And is it not also among our 
young? 

Yet, notwithstanding its natural sensi- 
tiveness to religious impressions and its 
spiritual fervency, youth is inclined to 
skepticism. But this very skepticism re- 



26 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

suits from its restless, anxious search for 
the Absolute Truth. It is a reaching up- 
ward of the young soul toward the un- 
known God. It is suspicious of the 
means offered it by which to find Him. 
It impatiently pushes them aside. But it 
soon wearies in seeking for the " un- 
searchable," and either sinks back in 
gloomy despair, or finds God in the tra- 
ditional faith. May our elders be consid- 
erate with the skepticism of youth. It is 
a healthy enough sign. 

" There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds." 

Indifferentism is never skeptical. It 
willingly acquiesces in all the articles of 
the creeds to save being troubled. The 
skeptical mind is the mind that is 
troubled. It seeks the solution of its 
problems. Let it become active and alive 
and it will find all the solution it needs. 
" If any man will do his will," said Je- 
sus, " he shall know of the doctrine, 
whether it be of God, or whether I speak 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 27 

of myself." The soil was fertile and 
ready for the seed which was sown. 

In the next chapter we shall speak of 
the season of planting. 



II. 

THE SEASON. 



"To everything there is a season, and a time to every pur- 
pose under the heaven."— Ecclesiastes. 



* When they see the hours ripe on earth."— Shakespeare, 
(29) 



THE SEASON. 

Tt is still more important that the seed 
* be planted in the right season than 
that the soil be of the best quality. The 
moistened atmosphere, the vivifying sun, 
and the warm showers must all contribute 
their fostering forces to the germinating 
seed. It will matter little how rich and 
well cultivated the soil may be, if the seed 
is not sown in the proper season. This 
century came in with manifestations of 
great spiritual quickening in this country. 
Social and religious activity ran high 
throughout the world. It was the keen 
mind of Schiller which perceived that 

"An epoch important has with the century risen." 

Every part of this country had its relig- 
ious agitation of some kind; in New Eng- 
(31) 



32 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

land the Unitarian reaction brought an 
old theological controversy to a head and 
break; in Kentucky the Great Revival, 
the shouts of whose camp-meeting ecsta- 
sies were caught up and echoed through 
the forests of many a pioneer State, pro- 
foundly influenced the religious life of the 
whole country, "increasing," according 
to Dr. B. B. Tyler, "the membership of 
the Presbyterian Church twofold, the 
Congregational Church twofold, the Bap- 
tist Church threefold, and the Methodist 
Episcopal Church as much as sevenfold;" 
and in the regions of the Ohio and Mis- 
sissippi valleys, religious thought was 
agitated to such an extent that the plea 
for a return to the non-sectarian Chris- 
tianity of the New Testament, as advo- 
cated by Alexander Campbell, was re- 
ceived in the brief space of a quarter of a 
century by between two and three hun- 
dred thousand people. But in all these 
convulsions the controversies were of a 
doctrinal character, and sect feeling was 
accordingly intense and exclusive. To be 
sound in the faith was of far greater con- 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 33 

sequence than to be fervent in spirit in 
the service of God. Fraternal charity 
and Christian forbearance were graciously 
and nobly accorded to him who was weak 
in the flesh. A moral error was easily 
forgiven, but there was no kind of for- 
bearance for doctrinal error. Heresy was 
inexcusable. This condition of religious 
America kept growing more and more in- 
tense until the outbreak of the Civil War, 
and the reaction against it which was then 
imminent was only staved off by that 
great national conflict, which drew the 
best energies of a generation from other 
channels to the solution and settlement 
of one all-absorbing political and social 
problem. A true picture of the state of 
American church life in 1852 is thus given 
by a discriminating and philosophic mind: 
"We live in a sectarian and conse- 
quently in a controversial age. Chris- 
tianity, as it is called, has degenerated 
into a speculative science, and therefore 
into innumerable forms of opinionism. 
Theories instead of facts, speculations in- 
stead of faith, forms and ceremonies in- 



34 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

stead of a new life, and a profession of 
godliness without its vitality and poiver, 
are now and have long been the charac- 
teristics of the Christian profession." * 

In these doctrinal controversies which 
were the weight of pulpit discourses, the 
burden of the religious journals, and even 
the theme of prayer-meeting talks and 
Sunday-school teachings, it is not to be 
supposed that the young could take much 
interest. Only by periodic revivals of 
feverish excitement were the churches 
replenished at all. The great bulk of the 
young men remained outside the church, 
and the depth of depravity and sin to 
which the life of the youth sank is sadly 
shown by the large number of lectures to 
young men which were delivered, pub- 
lished and distributed in those years. t 
And the social life of the churches was 



* Alexander Campbell in an address before the 
Bible Union. 

t Henry Ward Beecher's Lectures to Young 3Ie?i, 
published in a little western town in 1845, while 
he was but an obscure preacher, ran through an 
edition of three thousand copies in less than one 
year. 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 35 

not attractive enough to hold the young, 
even when in protracted "seasons of re- 
ligion" large numbers of them, in re- 
sponse to their naturally religious im- 
pulses had entered the Christian life. 
The frequent use of the unhappy appella- 
tion of "backslider" in their ecclesias- 
tical phraseology is suggestive of the 
gloomy and pathetic state of religious life 
in those days. The Sunday-school was in 
quite vigorous operation, but there was 
no link which joined it to the church. 
There came a time in the life of every 
youth when he considered himself too big 
for the Sunday-school, and not yet old 
enough to acquiesce in the sober regime 
of the full-fledged Christian. There was 
a wide desert through which the waters of 
Christianity and church life had to run, 
and there was considerable leakage away 
into the sands of sin and indifference. It 
was a time in which the words of Byron 
might have found response in the breast 
of the thoughtful young : 

"Alas ! our young affections run to waste, 
Or water but the desert." 



36 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

The Young Men's Christian Association 
was then in existence, but it was not vig- 
orous or efficient; and even if it had been, 
so far as its peculiar mission is concerned, 
it would not have bridged the gulf. It 
was a great and worthy organization which 
grew out of the social needs of Christian 
young men who are away from the influ- 
ences of their home church and associa- 
tions, or who are in need of Christian 
companionship and life 'in a good, moral 
atmosphere. There was a deeper need 
than this — it was the need of an influence 
that would make the Christian life begin 
at the mother's knee and continue until it 
reached the grave. As Dr. Clark says: 
"There is no reason why any child of 
Christian parents should wander off into 
the ways of sin and become befouled and 
smirched in the ways of the world before 
he can seek the purity of the kingdom of 
God." Many people had said, and more 
had thought something of that same kind 
before, and yet children of Christian par- 
ents kept slipping away until in many fam- 
ilies but the father and mother were pro- 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 37 

fessed church members, even after their 
children were grown to manhood and 
womanhood. That something was wanted 
was very plain. And this want found ex- 
pression in numerous societies of young 
people which were organized in wide- 
awake churches, and needed in thousands 
more. But, for the most part, the results 
of these efforts seemed to be only tran- 
sient — they had not such a combination of 
elements as to make them permanent and 
strong. In short, the want was felt, but 
imperfectly expressed, until it found a 
lucid interpretation in one of the greatest 
organized movements of this century. 

" Deep wishes in the heart that be, 
Are blossoms of necessity.''' 

As we have seen, the Civil War opened 
a valve of action for that surplus youth- 
ful energy which was otherwise either 
wasting itself or accumulating for a de- 
structive explosion. And the two million 
young men who offered themselves on the 
altar of Mars in devotion to their respect- 
ive factions, present a melancholy con- 



38 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

trast to the two million young people, 
who, in the various Juvenile Christian 
organizations, are offering themselves in 
a nobler and living sacrifice on the altar 
of the God of true honor and righteous- 
ness. In the heat of that great conflict 
no such movement as this could have suc- 
ceeded. It was not the planting season 
for the Christian Endeavor seed. Relig- 
ious and intellectual movements are re- 
served for the leisure and quiet of peace. 
It was many years after the war before 
the public mind could resume, with any 
kind of real and earnest vigor, the sus- 
pended non-political matters. A new 
generation has come upon the stage of 
American life. The old abstract discus- 
sions of religious questions have returned. 
Theology, such as it is, has come back for 
its accustomed attention. This age is pro- 
lific in theologians, destructive and con- 
structive. We have the theological novel 
now where we had the tale of politics and 
humanity a half century ago. ''Robert 
Elsmere " has taken the place on our 
shelves of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Emi- 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 39 

nent divines are talking of the evolution 
of Christian theology in pulpits which a 
quarter of a century ago thundered against 
human slavery, while the religious differ- 
ences are not now denominational, but 
theological — no longer a quarrel between 
the sects, but a war between the conserva- 
tive and radical schools of all the sects. 
The fight is becoming a hot one, and for 
many it is of absorbing interest, and yet 
the great bulk of our youth cannot be ex- 
pected to take any real and vital interest 
in the conflict. But they must not be neg- 
lected while these discussions are going 
on. Indeed, it is in such seasons as these 
that they should receive most attention, 
for if any break is to come (and these are 
portentous times, if we are to believe our 
prophets) our only hope is in the staying 
powers of our youth. There are times 
when the ropes of faith become loosened 
by the very dryness of the atmosphere; 
when theology is troubled and its trum- 
pet gives an uncertain sound. In such 
seasons as these, there is great danger 
that in the shaking up of our doctrines 



40 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

our spiritual life be lost, and in the gen- 
eral landslide of faith the foundations of 
our moral and social life be undermined; 
for, as Leslie Stephen says, " there is a 
correlation between the creeds of society 
and its political and social organization ; " 
and if a creed is to be revised, or even die, 
we want to be prepared to cling still to 
our sacred and eternal principles of moral 
and social order. If in such seasons of 
disturbance and convulsion there is no 
great idea, no noble sentiment, that can 
come forward and inspire a high and dis- 
interested enthusiasm, society, unable to 
reconstruct itself with the pace of disin- 
tegration, sinks back into moral exhaus- 
tion or indifference. So it was with 
France at the transition from the Old 
Regime to the New, and the youthful 
force, energy and power that has in 
France been lost to the world in a cen- 
tury which should have utilized it in a 
thousand ways and multiplied it a thous- 
and fold only the eternal years will 
reveal. France is physically dying. Her 
population decreases with the passing 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 41 

away of each decade. Her rural districts, 
according to M. Taine, are fast relapsing 
into paganism. Her vitality has been 
poured out upon the sands. Her show of 
health is but the hectic flush of fever. 
She stood 

" Between two worlds, one dead, 
The other powerless to be born." 

Says Canon Westcott in his Social As- 
pects of Christianity, "There are periods 
in the history of the Church — the history 
of the spiritual growth of humanity — 
which are at once an end and a begin- 
ning. . . . Unexpected forces reveal 
themselves and unexpected evils make 
themselves felt. Such periods are periods 
of intense, disordered, passionate feeling, 
men's hearts failing them for fear and for 
expectation of the things which are coming 
on the ivorld" This decade is such a 
period, and the Juvenile Revival has come 
as a Grod-send — like the white canvas of a 
sail to a vessel in distress, like the rope 
that is grasped by the drowning man. It 
is to the breaking up of this century what 



42 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

the great work of Francis of Assisi was 
to the period of the Renaissance, a com- 
parison which we shall give fuller consid- 
eration to in another chapter. 

Another reason that makes this the 
growing season for the Christian Endeavor 
organization and life is that this age is 
(strangely enough) both mechanical and 
spiritual. The first half of this century 
was a time of organizations of all kinds 
and for all purposes. People ran wild 
with the penchant for organization. 
Channing humorously refers to this in a 
discourse delivered in "1829: "It may be 
said, without much exaggeration, that 
everything is done now by societies. . . . 
You can scarecly name an object for which 
some institution has not been formed. 
Would men spread one set of opinions 
and crush another? They make a society. 
Would they improve the Penal Code or 
relieve poor debtors? They make socie- 
ties. Would they encourage agriculture, 
or manufactures, or science? They make 
societies. Would one class encourage 
horse-racing, and another discourage trav- 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 43 

eling on Sunday? They make societies." 
Though there is nothing so cold, lifeless 
and uninspiring as the mechanical details 
and burdens of organization, the multi- 
plication of these societies has been the 
outward sign of the inner life, spirit and 
earnestness of the age. They were the 
imperfect and cold expressions without, 
of a warm heart within. Our complex 
and extensive life made organization and 
division of labor the two great social and 
ecclesiastical, as well as economic, neces- 
sities. Even benevolence, which of all 
things should come spontaneously from 
the heart, finds its most satisfactory ser- 
vice in forms of organized and associated 
charities. Organization has always been 
the cold and rugged outer wall. To ex- 
tremely spiritual and spontaneous natures 
it has been a melancholy necessity. There 
is no magnetism in organized order. It is 
rather repellant than attractive. The sys- 
tematic man is not the man we feel drawn 
to, but, as Emerson says, "We love char- 
acters in proportion as they are impulsive 
and spontaneous." In these last two de- 



44 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

cades, thought and taste are becoming 
more spiritual. A half century ago a 
crabbed, unlovely dyspeptic, provided he 
had a powerful intellect, might have half 
the English-speaking world thronging at 
his heels, but to-day the men we follow 
are the men whom we can love. To-day 
the preachers whose pulpits we throng 
are men of fervent natures — warm- 
hearted human beings, — not disembodied 
intellects. The pulpit favorites of this 
generation have been such men as 
Beecher and Brooks. The favorites of a 
few generations ago were such men as 
Edwards and Chalmers. The good old 
times are returning when the dry eye of 
stoicism is no longer the necessary sign of 
manhood. Spirituality is more popular 
in this generation than intellectuality. 

It was the union, then, of organization 
and spirituality, so that the latter vivifies 
the former, and the former's sole purpose 
is to serve the interests of the latter, that 
has met the wants of this age with pecu- 
liar adaptability and force. In the Chris- 
tian Endeavor movement, organization 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 45 

has lost its repulsive ugliness by the light 
of a higher spiritual life which beamed 
through it. That the season was right 
and ready for the very seed that was 
planted, is seen in the fact that nearly 
every detail of the Christian Endeavor 
organization, as now supported by a mill- 
ion and a half people, remains substan- 
tially the same as in the original society. 
The starting of this society was one of 
the happy accidents that so frequently 
occur in human history. The man who 
planted the seed could not possibly have 
foreseen what it would grow to. And it 
is that very circumstance that makes the 
movement, and the men to whom we are 
indebted for it, great. It is not a scheme 
that has been " pushed," but it is a seed 
which being dropped into the right soil at 
the right season has grown in spite of 
everything, until it has become a great 
tree with wide-spreading, sheltering 
branches. All truly great things are 
accidents. " There is less intention in 
history," says Emerson, "than weascribe 
to it." No man or company of men can 



46 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

direct the current of history. Great men 
have been great because " their success 
lay in their parallelism to the course of 
thought, which found in them an unob- 
structed channel." Great ideas inspire 
great movements because they satisfy felt 
but indefinable longings, arouse latent 
energy, or speak the word which draws 
from a thousand throats the shout, 
"That's the idea! That's the idea!" 
But in dwelling on the Christian Endeav- 
or idea we are infringing on territory 
which belongs to the theme of our next 
chapter — the seed. We are merely trying 
to show that there had to come a time 
when we were ready for the seed, as in the 
history of events there is a season pre- 
pared for the coming of every great idea. 
Three centuries before the coming of our 
Lord, the world was preparing for him. 
All that time the Roman cohorts were 
busy hushing the warring nations through- 
out the earth for the advent of the 
Prince of Peace, and Greek learning and 
language, like a soft carpet, were spread 
over the face of the earth. The ring of 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 47 

the closing doors of the Temple of Janus 
was heard throughout the world and quiet 
reigned. The eyes of all were turned 
toward the East when the Sun of Right- 
eousness arose above those sacred plains. 
Man was waiting for his Saviour, and the 
happy shout, " Unto us this day a King is 
born — a Captain of our Salvation," — 
which first reverberated among Judean 
hills has been the cry of every age for nine- 
teen hundred years. It struck the popu- 
lar chord ; it interpreted the longing of the 
human heart ; it gave man life. All other 
movements, however great, can be no more 
than miniatures of that greatest of all. 
And they are only great when they reflect 
the influence of that one, as the moon 
reflects the solar light. The flood of 
divine light then shed' upon the world is 
sufficient for our richest, highest and com- 
pletest illumination, until the dawn of the 
Everlasting Dav. To appropriate that 
light more and more as the years and cen- 
turies pass, until it has transformed the 
tissue of our being, should be the end of 



48 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

every human movement, for Christ truly 
came that we might have life and that we 
might have it more abundantly. 



III. 

THE SEED. 



" The Kingdom of Heaven is like to a grain of mustard 
seed which a man took and sowed in his field."— Jesus. 

" The stirring of the soil gives a chance for the growth of 
new seeds of thought."— Leslie Stephen. 
4 C49) 



III. 

THE SEED. 

TJaving taken a brief glance of the two 
* * preliminary objective conditions of 
the growth of Christian Endeavor, we 
are prepared to study the subjective ele- 
ments whose combination in the Christian 
Endeavor scheme has given it the imme- 
diate sympathy, concurrence and confi- 
dence of the Christian youth of all de- 
nominations. The importance of the soil 
and the season is only relative. It is de- 
termined by the quality of the seed. The 
soil will not sustain us, and Autumn will 
bring us no fruits if the seed has not 
been sown in the spring time. Soil and 
season are but external conditions, lifeless 
circumstances, depending for their bless- 
ings to humanity upon the germs of life 

which they nourish. The seed is the liv- 
(51). 



52 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

ing germ which, by its operations on the 
soil and the season, supports our lives. 
It is the influence which binds us to out- 
ward nature. It is the regenerating prin- 
ciple which works, unseen, the marvelous 
evolutions and changes in the vegetable 
kingdom, as the eternal Logos, which is the 
seed of God's kingdom, is producing 
changes and evolutions in human life. 

The movement of thought is slowly for- 
ward. She constructs institutions as they 
are needed, and mercilessly tears them 
down when their purpose has been served. 
She reconstructs them when the change 
of her position demands it, or leaves 
them standing as landmarks to show the 
course of her journey. When she has 
need of any work along her highway of 
progress she calls for it, and servants 
from the roadside hedges appear to do 
her bidding. Prophets, generals, kings, 
reformers, all men of all talents, tenden- 
cies and professions, have answered to 
her call. Impediments have been thrown 
across her pathway, but she has ordered 
them removed — and they have gone. 



THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 53 

Fences have been built to change the di- 
rection of her motion and lead her off 
into narrow byways, but the fences have 
been levelled at her feet, and she has 
marched triumphantly onward. Alluring 
voices have called her to stop and turn 
backward, and she has seemed at times to 
halt and listen, but it has only been to 
resume her journey with greater vigor. 
Heavy weights have been thrown across 
her shoulders, but they have only in- 
creased her momentum. She is the in- 
visible congregation, pressing onward to 
her union with her Lord. She is the 
Divine Life at work in humanity — God 
in the human soul. Her progress has 
been often clouded but never suspended. 
Her road led through a darkened wilder- 
ness. The mires and sloughs were about 
her and before her. The heavy rain 
stained and drenched her garments. The 
fiery eyes of savage beasts glared threat- 
eningly upon her. Only now and then a 
prophetic flash of lightning from heaven 
illuminated the way a few feet before her 
— then again all was dense blackness. 



54 THE JUVEXILE BEVIVAL. 

Her bitter wail pierced every corner of 
the forest. She called for a Deliverer. 
She called for Him in the Hebrew tongue 
as her Messiah. She called for Him 
in the Greek tongue as her Logos, or En- 
lightener. She called for Him in the 
Soman tongue as her Lord and Leader. 
He heard her cry and came to show her 
the true way. He left her His lamp to 
be a guide unto her path and a light unto 
her feet. She called for Luther, and he 
obeyed her. Calvin, Knox, Wesley, all 
have done her service. When she has 
called for reformations, the church has 
been broken and reconstructed. When 
she has called for revolutions, nations 
have trembled, political earthquakes have 
followed, and governments have been 
swallowed up, or brought to light. She 
has cultivated the soil where the seeds of 
human growths should be cast, and when 
the planting season has come, she has 
called for the seed and it has been 
sown. This general trend of thought and 
life is the omnipotent and irresistible 
Zeit- Geist — the Time-Spirit — and all 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 55 

minor movements have philosophic sig- 
nificance only as they are studied in their 
relation to this general forward move- 
ment, which, aided or hindered by exter- 
nal influences, has brought human life 
from the uncultivated garden of its crea- 
tion to the civilization that adorns the 
threshold of the twentieth century. No 
social, political, or religious movement or 
agitation of any kind has ever occurred 
that has not been in some degree the re- 
sultant of some of the aggregated influ- 
ences of this common trend; and on the 
other hand, the influence of every move- 
ment and agitation will be felt when the 
grand total is made up in the end of time. 
They are all contributing their forces to 
the general flow of human society. 
Sooner or later all the streams of influ- 
ence unite themselves to the one univer- 
sal current, and the current is affected by 
it. In the centuries of the crusades 
Oriental and Occidental life interchanged 
influences, and both East and West have 
felt the effects of the meeting, and always 
will. In the early part of this century 



56 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

the discovery of the sacred literature of 
the Eastern religions, through the me- 
dium of an ancient hut new-found lan- 
guage, gave a new impetus to European 
thought; and influences which sprang 
from Indian philosophers three thousand 
years ago, and which no one two hundred 
years since would have thought could 
ever get beyond the Euphrates on ^the 
West or the Islands of Japan on the 
East, are now deeply stirring many cen- 
ters of thought in Western civilization; 
while the forces of our ideas and the in- 
fluences of our achievements— elements 
which had their birth in classic Athens, 
civil Eome, or the wilds of a German for- 
est two thousand years ago, are irresisti- 
bly working their way into all currents of 
Oriental life, vivifying and transforming 
petrified nations by the introduction of a 
more potent and active leaven. Our li- 
braries are being flooded with the sacred 
books of the East, and societies of The- 
osophy and esoteric Buddhisfri are spring- 
ing up in the chief cities of Europe and 
America; while Christian ideas are taking 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 57 

hold, with a much firmer grasp, of the 
Eastern mind. Ideas, like men, must 
bide their time. A naked idea may be 
born in one man's mind and he may 
preach it eloquently, fervently and confi- 
dently, but if no one else can understand 
it, or sympathize with him, he is regarded 
only as a crazy man or fanatic; he is 
thrown into a dungeon or burned at the 
stake, crowned with thorns and crucified, 
or driven from his country, and his idea 
seems to perish with him. But as time 
goes on, the same idea may be born in 
the mind of another man, and he preaches 
it, no more eloquently nor confidently 
than the first, but it gains adherents. It 
falls like a spark in the dry tinder. 
Thousands become his followers. What 
is the reason for it? The reason is not in 
the man, nor the idea itself; but in the 
agreement and coincidence of the forces 
and influences which make up and con- 
trol universal life. • Forces which have 
been latent, or only operating in a few 
minds, suddenly by some wave of popular 
influence are washed out in view of the 



58 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

public gaze and become popular jewels. 
Christian Endeavor is simply one of the 
popular jewels of this generation. 

Men sometimes sneer at what they call 
" waves of popular excitement," and 
great movements which have profoundly 
influenced society in their century and 
generation they sneeringly call "mere 
effervescences of passing enthusiasm." 
Such sneering is both unscholarly and 
egotistical. It is unscholarly and unphil- 
osophical because it fails to catch the 
note of power that every movement must 
have before it can strike the popular chord, 
and if it seems to have struck the popular 
chord, we show an extreme of egotism 
when we deny that there is music in the 
strain for other ears, merely because our 
own have not caught it, or condemn the 
soul that has drawn inspiration from what 
might strike us as discord. Such sneer- 
ing is also blind, so far as past human life 
is concerned, and if it has studied history 
at all, it has not studied it scientifically. 
All human progress has been by what may 
be called waves of popular excitement, or 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 59 

evanescent glows of enthusiasm ; and it is 
the highest compliment that can be paid 
a great idea, to say that it has been able 
to be the inspiration of these same waves 
of popular enthusiasm, and to so direct 
them that they may serve their generation 
until their force has spent itself. And no 
man or movement ever served a passing 
generation and did not in that service 
bless all coming ages. All gloomy and 
unhappy pessimism would pass away if we 
threw ourselves into sympathy with the 
potent ideas of our times. Christianity 
was itself a growth of popular enthusiasm 
when it began, and no Greek or Roman 
philosopher or historian would have 
called it anything else. But it was an en- 
thusiasm for a divine ideal — it was an 
abiding enthusiasm. It had its germ from 
God, and its roots were planted deep in 
the soil of the human soul. But every 
idea is a blessing, when its tilne comes, by 
its own innate worth. What, then, are 
the subjective elements in the Christian 
Endeavor seed which enable us to account 
for its power? 



60 THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 

Christian Endeavor is a Protestant 
movement. Protestantism has all to gain 
from it. It supplies needs which had been 
felt only in Protestant churches. It feeds 
and satisfies the devotional hunger of the 
young which the mystic and symbolic wor- 
ship of the Roman Church quiets and stu- 
pefies. The emphasis which Protestant- 
ism placed upon faith alone naturally 
resulted in defining the true nature and 
objects of faith in any number of differ- 
ent ways. In Protestant religion, there- 
fore, theology became the predominating 
feature. It has been speculative and 
fluctuating, for faith, the object of its 
constant attention, has been ever-chang- 
ing. It has made little of the aesthetic 
phase of religious worship, and the doc- 
trine of works has been but secondarily 
considered. The Oxford movement was 
a reaction against it on aesthetic grounds. 
It went to work restoring the cathedrals 
and reintroducing the elaborate ritualism 
of the Mediaeval Church. It was a mor- 
bid but a natural reaction. It was inevit- 
able, but it has contributed no positive 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 61 

nor permanent blessing to humanity. 
The Christian Endeavor idea is both devo- 
tional and practical. While not in any 
way underestimating faith, the theme of 
its vigorous life has been works. It looks 
out upon a mundane existence and gives 
to it a religious aspect. It is systematic 
and business-like. It is natural that in 
its reaction from dogmatic Christianity it 
should make much of practical Christian- 
ity. It does not trouble itself about the 
theological question, "What must I be- 
lieve?" but it starts with the question of 
Paul, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to 
do? " and in apostolic fervor it sets about 
reproducing Paul's life of active service. 
The great reactions of the present century 
have been doctrinal (or anti-doctrinal) in 
character; they have been negative or 
protesting movements, carrying out the 
spirit of Protestantism until it has almost 
become distasteful. Christian Endeavor 
is a reaction against the spirit of these re- 
actions, and also the spirit which resisted 
them. These reactions were analytic in 
their general operation. They discovered 



62 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

new mines of truth and did good service 
in their day, but so deep had they gone in 
the analyses of their special differences 
that sectarian barriers had been heaped 
to great heights. Christian Endeavor is 
synthetic and catholic. It sounds the sig- 
nal for the coming up out of the pits to 
mingle again in one common company. 
Twenty-five years aga when two Christians 
met, the first question which they mutu- 
ally interchanged was, " Of what denomi- 
nation are you? " But to-day when Chris- 
tian Endeavorers meet — whether they are 
Baptists, Presbyterians, or Congregation- 
alists — they forget for the time that they 
are anything more than Christians. And 
that man now who insists upon ringing the 
changes on doctrinal points, and pounding 
away on sectarian distinctions, soon finds 
himself without an audience. This whole 
movement is a keen and clear broadside 
against sectarian narrowness. This note 
of universality lias been quickly caught up 
by the pulpit, which is always in the van 
of every good work, and in the great 
Christian Endeavor Conventions, Meth- 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 63 

odist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Disci- 
ple, are found sitting harmoniously in the 
same seats, while their respective pastors 
on the platform are vying with each other 
to see who can say the nicest things of the 
new drift. The first element, then, in the 
seed itself which has given it its marvel- 
ously rapid and extensive growth, is its 
synthetic and catholic spirit, as opposed 
to the analytic and narrow spirit. 

The Christian Endeavor idea takes hold 
of the sense of conscientiousness, which is 
one of the most sensitive moral elements 
in juvenile life. Its aim is not to culti- 
vate this conscientiousness, but it assumes 
it to exist and utilizes it. The conscience, 
or the sense of duty within us, comprises 
the chief part of the capital upon which 
the business of the Christian life is begun, 
and he who makes his sense of duty a 
thing too sacred to be harnessed and used, 
robs his practical life of its most valuable 
support. When the conscience revolted 
in the Protestant Reformation, it pulled 
away from everything characterized as 
Roman Catholic with such vigor that 



64 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

when the fetters broke, its inertia landed 
it on the extreme opposite ground. The 
freedom of the conscience was then recov- 
ered for all time. No power on earth will 
ever again enchain it. It is God who has 
wrought its liberation. It now believes 
what it chooses, rejects what it chooses, 
promises what it chooses. It has a right 
to be free, but the question which Chris- 
tian Endeavor asks is, "Has it a right to 
be idle?" I knew a shiftless man in the 
country. He lived in a little rented log 
house, for which he was supposed to pay 
$2.00 per month. He had a wife and 
family. He was able-bodied and strong. 
He cherished as an inalienable boon the 
freedom of an American citizen. He 
worked when it pleased him, which was 
not often, and loafed the rest of the time. 
When he worked at all he did only what 
pleased him, for he was a free man. He 
would never consent to labor under the 
orders of another, for he was a free man. 
Month after month of the summer passed, 
and the harvests were calling for laborers, 
but he was not in the working business. 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 65 

He tinkered around his own house, be- 
cause there he could be a free man. The 
shades and winds of autumn came, and 
the gorgeous-tinted leaves began to fall. 
The sound of rustling sheaves of corn, the 
clink of the hoes in the potatoe-field, and 
the melancholy quack of passing flocks of 
geese on their way to southern climates — 
all warned him of the approach of winter. 
But he still continued hugging his shad- 
owy phantpm — liberty. The cold blasts 
of winter came. The snow lay two feet 
deep. His children, half clothed, huddled 
about the broken stove. The wood-box 
was almost empty. The wind howled dis- 
mally without, and whistled through tho 
cracks of the walls and doors, carrying 
streaks of snow across the floor. His 
wife, in a storm of rage, announces the 
unwelcome news that the cupboard is 
empty. She calls him a good-for-nothing 
wretch — worthless and negligent — and he 
cannot gainsay her word. He puts on his 
cap, draws it down over his ears, looks 
out of the window at the driving storm, 
shivers at the view, and goes out. He 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 



calls on his nearest neighbor, and after 
sitting by the fire for two hours, talking 
about politics from the Revolution down, 
and how the boys in blue whipped the 
rebs at Gettysburg and Appommatox and 
Shiloh, he makes known his errand — he 
would like to borrow a few pounds of 
pork, and a little flour, and perhaps a lit- 
tle blackstrap molasses. But his frugal 
neighbor knows him, and he has neither 
pork, flour nor molasses to lend. So our 
friend goes on to the next neighbor, thus 
making the rounds of the neighborhood 
and returning in the evening with the 
scanty proceeds of his borrowing expedi- 
tion to a starving family. He is free, but 
he starves on his freedom, because his 
freedom is idleness. So I have known it 
to be with some young Christians. 
"Come," it is said to them, "will you 
promise this?" "No, I won't make any 
promise. I will do it if it comes conven- 
ient, but I shan't make any promise; I am 
not going to bind myself. I shan't sign 
any pledge. I won't commit myself to 
anything. I'll do what I can, and I don't 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 67 

need to sign a pledge or contract, or make 
a promise. I want to hold my conscience 
free." This is the type of character 
which Christian Endeavor has had to deal 
with. As a movement, then, it. means the 
inculcation of new principles of religious 
action. The Protestant doctrine of the 
freedom of the conscience has developed 
in many cases into the doctrine of per- 
sonal irresponsibility, or the idleness of 
the conscience. This taking hold of the 
conscience — the sense of duty — and util- 
izing it in a religious vow or pledge, is 
bringing back into the service of religion 
an element in human nature which prima- 
rily belongs to it. "Religion," says Kant, 
"(as subjective) consists in our recogniz- 
ing all our duties as Divine Command- 
ments." That the Roman Church abused 
monastic vows in the Middle Ages is said 
by Christian Endeavor to be a puerile rea- 
son for our objecting forever to vows alto- 
gether. At any rate, the chief good 
which the Roman Church was enabled in 
former ages to accomplish came largely 
through her svstem of vows. That some 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 



of her vows are abominable does not con- 
demn the principle, and it is full time 
that Protestants should begin to recover 
from that individuating tendency which, 
carried to an extreme, will bear the fruits 
of unbridled anarchy — anarchy that even 
now begins to threaten the destruction of 
those vows and pledges w T hich are the 
basis of our moral and social order. The 
Christian Endeavor pledge is one of the 
strong features of the movement, and 
gives to it a peculiar significance. Other 
religious movements have presented 
creeds, either written or unwritten — an 
enumeration of things to be believed or 
denied — in which case they have all crys- 
tallized into denominations and been 
added to the number of sects. Christian 
Endeavor, instead of a creed, presents a 
pledge. Assuming that the possibilities 
of faith have been well-nigh exhausted, 
she takes up her abode w T ith her opposite 
neighbor, faithfulness. The reasonable 
hope has been expressed that the pledge 
of Christian Endeavor will do for the 
glory of religion among the youth of the 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 69 

twentieth century what the knightly vow 
did for the glory of Chivalry among the 
youth in former centuries. 

The Christian Endeavor idea is positive 
in spirit. It takes up its ground in affir- 
mation, not in negation. What it can not 
affirm it takes no trouble to deny. Its 
tone is rather that of the New Testament 
than that of the Old. The Ten Com- 
mandments are largely prohibitions — 
"Thou shall not." The Sermon on the 
Mount is a beatitude upon those who are 
merciful, meek, pure in heart, peace- 
makers; upon those who, instead of con- 
cealing their light under a bushel, bring 
it out that it may shine before men — it is 
positive. This is the great distinction 
between the religion of Jesus and those of 
Buddha, Confucius and others. Buddha 
said: "The extinction of desire is the 
real self-conquest. To be fixed in spir- 
itual contemplation is to conquer the 
power of evil." Jesus said: "He that 
doeth the will of the Father in heaven — 
he shall know the doctrine. He that 
doeth my commandments, he it is that 



70 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

loveth me." Buddha, in a striking par- 
allelism to the Decalogue, says: * "Ten 
things are evil: murder, theft, lust, are 
evils of the body; evasion, slander, lying, 
flattery, of the speech; envy, anger, de- 
lusion, of the thought. Thou must not 
kill, nor steal, nor commit adultery, nor 
lie, nor be drunken. Avoid dancing, 
theatres, high seats, covetousness, costly 
dresses and perfumes." Jesus sums all 
this up in a positive form when he says: 
"This is my commandment, that ye love 
one another. These things have I spoken 
unto you that my joy might remain in 
you and that your joy might be full." 
Confucius said in his general law of life : 
"Never do unto others what you would 
not want done to yourself." This ex- 
presses negatively what the Golden Rule 
presents positively — ' ' Do unto others 
what you would have them do unto you." 
One may sit inactive in his seat and obey 
Confucius; one cannot remain inactive 
and obey Jesus. The negative spirit be- 

* The fort3'-two sections Sutra. 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 71 

longs to the oriental mind; the positive 
spirit to the Occidental mind. The theme 
of Buddhism is renunciation, of Chris- 
tianity, life. But the theology of the last 
few centuries has rather tended to obscure 
and belittle personal service as bearing 
no weight in the scheme of religion. Man 
has been rather thrown back upon nega- 
tive ground as possessing no worth in 
himself. Eesolutions for the control of 
conduct have abounded in restrictions — 
pleasures to avoid and things to refrain 
from doing. To such an extent was this 
tendency carried that self-suppression, a 
negative virtue of it, if a virtue at all, be- 
came the dominating law of life — an end 
in itself. As it was wittily said, the ex- 
treme Puritanism opposed cock-fighting 
and bull-baiting less because they caused 
animals pain than that they afforded man 
pleasure, and oftentimes sports that were 
innocent and harmless were more emphat- 
ically condemned than practices which re- 
sulted in both degradation and misery. 
But this negative conduct of life was 
never popular, and could not, by the very 



72 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

constitution of the wide-awake, up-and- 
doing temperament of the European 
stock, long hold. It might, by the help 
of favoring circumstances, cling to a gen- 
eration or two, but when the native ele- 
ment returns again which sees not the 
conditions that produced the negation of 
a century past, it must go. Christian 
Endeavor therefore also celebrates a re- 
suscitation or rejuvenation of the posi- 
tive element in religion. It substitutes 
obligations for restrictions; not a nega- 
tive rule is given; every item of the pledge 
is positive. The bringing in of this posi- 
tive element into the religious life of the 
young bars much of the skepticism natu- 
ral to youth or deprives it of its season- 
ing, for skepticism is operative only in 
negation. With this brief study of the 
elementary principles in the Christian 
Endeavor idea — the germ of life in the 
seed, we shall more intelligently appre- 
ciate and sympathetically follow the phe- 
nomena of the movement — the growth of 
the blade. 



IV. 

THE BLADE. 

(73) 



IV. 

THE BLADE. 

T"*he Christian Endeavor movement can 
* not at present be further than the 
first stage of its development. As it ap- 
pears to us now, it manifests only the 
phenomena of a tender but promising 
blade. In an analysis of the idea we 
have also observed the favorable circum- 
stances which surround it. Now the 
plant itself has been growing before our 
eyes for more than ten years. Now when 
we speak of the Christian Endeavor move- 
ment we include all minor and denomin- 
ational organizations among the young 
which have re-expressed the Christian 
Endeavor thought, reproducing under 
other names its element of strength, save 

perhaps its catholic and synthetic spirit. 

(75) 



76 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

The fact that the idea has been widely 
plagiarized and its general organization 
and methods successfully imitated gives 
extra emphasis to its importance as a 
potent influence of the times. By the 
Juvenile Revival, then, I mean the general 
infusion of young life into the activity of 
the church in these recent years. And as 
Christian Endeavor is the exponent of 
this Juvenile Revival we make it the rep- 
resentative subject of our study. What 
the Christian Endeavor Movement is to 
this era, other movements have been to 
former eras, and we can fully appreciate 
its place in the religious thought and life 
of this decade only when we range it in 
line with the great movements of a simi- 
lar character in other ages. The close of 
the nineteenth century presents some 
striking points of resemblance to the close 
of the thirteenth. Both are seasons of 
almost universal peace preceded by almost 
universal war. Both are seasons of wide- 
spread religious awakening and interest. 
Both celebrate a revival of Christian ac- 
tivities together with a renaissance in the 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 77 

one case of art and literature, and in the 
other of commercial enterprise and intel- 
lectual life. The former period is about 
three hundred years after the completion 
of Europe's Christianization. The latter 
is about three hundred years after the 
completion of Europe's re-Christianiza- 
tion in the Protestant Revival. A more 
detailed picture of the close of the thir- 
teenth century will bring out this com- 
parison more fully and enable us to ap- 
preciate better the strength or weakness 
of our own. 

For two hundred years preceding the 
crusade period the church had no Chris- 
tian activity to offer the scores of tribes 
and nations which she had Christianized. 
She had promised them conquest in the 
hours of battle, and when they returned 
triumphant from the field, confident that 
the Christian's God had given them the 
victory, they received the baptism of the 
church and offered her their swords to be 
consecrated to her service, for they knew 
no service but the service of the sword. 
Thus they turned their new-found zeal 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 



against the heathen sheltered in the wilds 
beyond the confines of Christendom, un- 
til all Europe was brought, more or less 
by violence, into spiritual communion of 
the church. But for tw T o hundred years 
after the completion of this great work 
the sword had no fire of religious enthusi- 
asm behind it — the sacred touch of the 
church could no longer give it edge. For 
two long centuries there was a general 
restless sense of religious inactivity. The 
poor Jews suffered then, and it was an 
unfortunate time for the heretic. Relig- 
ious indifference naturally followed this 
universal .idleness, and diversion and rec- 
reation from the monotonous inactivity, 
which the church seemed careless or un- 
able to fill up, were found in bitter and 
prolonged warfare between feudal lords 
and rival royal houses. The long pent-up 
force found a welcome outlet in the cru- 
sades, and the preaching of one religious 
enthusiast was sufficient to raise all 
Europe to arms, the flame even spread- 
ing to the hearts of the children, who on 
the banks of the Rhine assembled a vast 



THE JUYEXILE BEVIVAL. 



army of their number and marched south- 
ward to the Mediterranean, perishing by 
thousands and being carried off on the 
way, until when they arrived at the sea, 
only a fraction of their original number 
remained to sail for the IJoly Land. 
Such a holy enthusiasm as that expended 
in the crusades, had it been directed in 
legitimate pursuits would have given a 
different shade to the darkness of the 
centuries which followed. It is a pathetic 
picture. Poor, misguided man ! filled with 
a holy zeal, burning with desire to serve 
his Savior with the highest service that he 
knows, with the crimson cross upon his 
breast, the stamp of religious fervor on 
his brow, the shout of "Deus vult! — God 
willeth it!" on his lips, dying on the 
parched or malarial plains of an uncon- 
genial clime, under an unfriendly sun, or 
laying down his life before the cimeter of 
the Saracen within sight of the white 
sepulcher of his Lord, resigning all with 
the faith of the martyr Stephen, whose 
last words he utters with his dying 
breath, — "Lord Jesus, receive my spir- 



80 THE JTJVENIL E BE VIVAL . 

it " — in all this there is something pathet- 
ically sublime! Thus misery untold, 
sorrow and bloodshed unrecorded, were 
wrought by a Christian zeal which, other- 
wise directed, might have made us infi- 
nitely better, happier and more intelligent 
to-day. But as it was, the first, or the 
eleventh century crusade, ended in gen- 
eral failure and disaster ; and as it does not 
require much of a set-back to cool a sud- 
den and passing ardor, so the first crusade 
was followed by a period of extreme cold- 
ness and dissatisfaction with the church, 
which was itself affected by the general 
disappointed. Heresies multiplied ; moral 
and religious torpor followed the disaster 
of the first crusade. Crime became gen- 
eral and society demoralized. Politics, 
which bore the natural fruit of a Machi- 
avelli a few years later, was devoid of 
every sentiment which was not selfish and 
utilitarian. The condition of the church 
is thus vividly painted by Gieseler : 

" While the system of ecclesiastical 
doctrines, with its progressive develop- 
ment, was enclosing the reason with bonds 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 81 

ever narrowing, while at the same time 
the means of salvation were more and 
more losing their spiritual character and 
their moral power by the one-sided specu- 
lations of schoolmen, and also sinking to 
a lifeless mechanism in their administra- 
tion; lastly, while this tortuous Church 
system, despairing of any spiritual influ- 
ence, was endeavoring to win recognition 
for itself by continual acts of external 
aggression; it could not but be that the 
rebellions against the Church which in 
earlier times came forward one by one 
should now be growing more numerous 
and more powerful." In the southern 
part of France and the northern part of 
Italy the Cathari, a devout and intelli- 
gent sect, spread widely and rapidly dur- 
ing the twelfth century, and toward the 
close of the century (1170) the Wal- 
denses arose. Discarding speculative en- 
thusiasm, they " aimed to realize again 
apostolic Christianity and all its inward 
devotion." The Scriptures were their 
text-book, and so zealously and intelli- 
gently did they search them that they 



82 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 



were led far away from the ecclesiasticism 
of their day. So popular were their plea 
and their methods of preaching, and so 
simple their mode of worship, that the 
Waldensian heresy was received as a res- 
urrection of the ancient Gospel. Thous- 
ands of the pious and intelligent among 
the common people, the gentry, and even 
the nobility heard it gladly. Rome be- 
came alarmed and thundered. But the 
simple folk, strengthened by their scrip- 
tural faith, replied that "they should 
obey God rather than man." Such an 
exasperating reply wrought their exter- 
mination. They might have answered 
the Jewish hierarchy thus, and been " set 
at liberty," but they had no business to 
speak in such style to the Pope of Rome. 
In his simple and popular methods of 
preaching, and going among the poor and 
lowly, Peter Waldo gave the suggestion 
and furnished the impetus to the greatest 
benefactor of the Dark Ages — St. Fran- 
cis of Assisi— who, in a movement com- 
posed of three orders, founded upon a 
vow, not unlike the Christian Endeavor 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 83 

pledge, illuminated a path of Christian 
service, the like of which had not before 
been seen since the close of the Apostolic 
era — a movement the influence of which 
we feel to-day. We cannot pass on with- 
out observing that a general appeal for a 
return to the simplicity of the apostolic 
faith and methods in religion has been 
usually followed by such general and live- 
ly interest in genuine and practical Chris- 
tianity as the Franciscan and Christian 
Endeavor movements. Francis appro- 
priated the elements of strength which 
he saw the Waldensian teaching pos- 
sessed, without antagonizing the Church. 
He rather used them for her benefit in 
leading her on to a life of Christian ac- 
tivity such as she had not known before. 
In the nineteenth century the plea for a 
return to the simple Christianity of the 
New Testament has been more popular 
and potent than ever before in the history 
of Protestantism. The work of the Hal- 
danes in Scotland, of the Disciples in 
America, whose marvelous growth has in 
less than seventy-five years carried their 



84 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

missionaries and Church to all parts of 
the globe ; to say nothing of the various 
other movements, such as the Christian 
Connection in this country and the Bible 
Christians in England, having the same 
purpose before them, — all this is evidence 
enough of the truth of this assertion. 
Now the Christian Endeavor movement 
appropriates and combines the most 
practical and popular elements of these 
other movements, not to antagonize the 
existing forms of sectarianism, but to 
adapt them to the wants of sectarianism 
in such a way as to lead it to a more 
united and therefore a higher and richer 
life. What the Franciscan movement 
was to the thirteenth century, Christian 
Endeavor is to the nineteenth. 

Let us draw this parallel still further. 
The close of the thirteenth century was 
the active period of the Renaissance. 
All the nations of Europe were awaken- 
ing to a new life. Vernacular literature 
was rising over the ruins of the classics. 
The common people from the Mediter- 
ranean to the British Isles were growing 



THE JUVENILIS REVIVAL. 85 

into the consciousness of a common life. 
In Italy they had their Boccaccio; in 
England their Chaucer. They spoke in 
different languages, but both alike ad- 
dressed their hearers in their vernacular 
tongues, and the tales that they told had 
the same foundations. Art, commerce 
and literature flourished on the shores of 
the Mediterranean; and in the North, 
colleges of eager students, numbered by 
thousands, listened to bold and learned 
professors. A grand and exciting age it 
was. The cords of life were drawn to 
high tension. But the danger to true re- 
ligion and therefore to morality is always 
greatest in nervous times. "There was 
a terribly dark side to the age," says 
Canon Westcott. "The leprosy which 
was then the terror and scourge of the 
towns was the symbol of evils greater and 
more subtle which were eating into the 
heart of society. The Kingdom of God 
was on the point of becoming a kingdom 
of the world. The splendid churches 
which serve for the inspiration of modern 
art were too often built by extortion. 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 



Religion was materialized both in its 
creed and its worship. Ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction was invading the w T hole 
sphere of life. The very consolations of 
faith were being degraded into a luxury 
for the wealthy. The poor — the poor, on 
whom Christ pronounced his first bene- 
diction,— were in danger of being forgot- 
ten. 

"But the Spirit of Christ was not left 
without a witness. Preachers arose on 
many sides who vindicated for the King- 
dom of God the claim to righteousness 
and peace and joy. For the most part 
their work was transitory because it was 
destructive, but one among them, Francis 
of Assisi, spoke in life so that his work 
can never cease to move." 

To the Franciscan movement, more 
than to any other influence, is due the 
credit of having tided the Christian re- 
ligion through the rapids of the Renais- 
sance. As then understood, it hardly 
seemed worthy to survive the general re- 
construction of things, but when the life 
and character of the humble Man of Naz- 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 



areth were again brought into touch with 
human life in all its relations by a sacri- 
fice, devotion and spirituality which re- 
vealed to man a new glory in himself, 
Christianity again endeared itself to hu- 
manity with a still firmer attachment. It 
is these surprising revelations of the 
potency of our religion that dumbfound 
and scatter her assailants. The specula- 
tions and apologetics of the schoolmen 
could never have arrested the disintegra- 
tion which had set in. But when a new 
power showed itself in a great organiza- 
tion of earnest men and women who dis- 
persed themselves among the poor, al- 
leviated their suffering, shared their pov- 
erty, preached to them the Gospel and 
despised the very things which were then 
the common craze — material wealth and 
learning — the disintegration ceased and 
the repair began, for it was an infusion of 
fresh young blood into the arteries of a 
dying church. 

Our present period is a repetition of 
much in the picture that we have drawn. 
It is a critical age. We cannot expect 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 



that the claim of sacredness is to shield a 
written page from the scrutiny of criti- 
cism. Criticism is in the air. That it is 
breathed in with every inspiration is the 
fault of no one. Examination of evi- 
dences is the spirit of the time. The 
higher critics are not to be hushed as chil- 
dren that are about to make some im- 
proper disclosure. They will speak out, 
and it is right they should, if they have 
any new truth to offer. If Moses really is 
not the author of the Pentateuch, we feel 
no horror in being correctly informed. 
Some claim that we have all the light now 
on that subject that we can have, and that 
opening the window will let in no more. 
Others claim that it will. Open* the win- 
dow, then, and if any light enters we are 
so much the gainers thereby; but if it is 
darker without than within, we have lost 
nothing. Apologetics and scholastic the- 
ology will do no more now than they did 
in the thirteenth century. Neither will 
orthodox scolding amount to much. The 
critic will only become the bolder; the 
heretic the more numerous; the scoffer 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 89 

will scoff the louder, and through it all 
the sinner will sin the harder. But they 
are all beginning to stand still in wonder- 
ing astonishment at the marvelous spec- 
tacle of more than a million youth who 
are alive with a fervent evangelical spirit. 
Youth who were religiously either dead 
or torpid spring up from the soil in a 
mighty army as if by magic. From the 
preacher yi his study and the editor in his 
sanctum, to the gambler at his table or 
the drunkard in the saloon — all are talk- 
ing about it. The Christian Endeavor 
conventions eclipse in number, earnest- 
ness, and even enthusiasm, the political 
conventions, and their mass-meetings are 
seldom failures, rain or shine. Composed 
of young people from a score of different 
denominations, the most perfect harmony 
prevails throughout the organization, and 
discord seldom enters even into the com- 
mittees. It has come as a new revelation 
of the power of spiritual Christianity at a 
time when her enemies were particularly 
confident in their assertions that she was 
really but little more now than a lifeless 



90 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

carcass. They are hushed at its sight. 
That Christianity has yet a germ of life in 
it is proved by the vigorous blade that has 
grown up right before their eyes, and in- 
fidelity must own its prophecies falsified 
once more. David Hume on his death- 
bed disavowed any fear of death, but re- 
gretted that he could not live a few more 
years that he might behold the downfall 
of Christianity, that vast system of super- 
stition against which he had employed the 
power of a gigantic intellect. It was a 
kind provision of Providence which did 
not permit him a view two hundred years 
intd the future, for his pretty delusion of 
the near collapse of the Christian religion 
would have been rudely torn from him, 
and he would have sunk back upon his 
pillow in* despair at the # prospect. No 
philosopher of his century so influenced 
English thought as he. And, cherished as 
his memory is by the thinking world, his 
conclusion concerning Christianity w T ill 
not be received. And this one fact infi- 
nitely increases our respect for the power 
of the Christian faith. Many in these 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 91 

late years have reproduced Hume's proph- 
ecies of the approaching death of our re- 
ligion. But this great Juvenile Revival 
has come as an opportune contradiction 
of their hopes — to guarantee the safety 
for a few* generations more of the Ark of 
the Covenant. 

The Franciscan order was also a lay in- 
stitution. This was largely the secret of 
its power. Francis himself never received 
episcopal ordination. His rule was to 
the Franciscan movement what the pledge 
is to Christian Endeavor. The former 
is chiefly negative; the latter is posi- 
tive. The former required the renuncia- 
tion of all ill-gotten gains; abstinence 
from aggressive war and litigation; the 
avoidance of elegant dress and amuse- 
ments. It also required meeting from 
time to time for worship and works of de- 
votion. It was the negative principle in 
the Franciscan order that caused its de- 
cline almost immediately after the death 
of its founder. It did not take into suffi- 
cient account the element of individuality, 
as one of the essential facts of life. 



92 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

Francis tried to destroy it. He once 
commanded that a rebellious brother 
should be buried, and when the earth had 
been thrown over him, he stooped down 
and asked, "Art thou dead, brother? Art 
thou dead?" "Yes," replied the poor 
fellow, "I am dead now." "Arise, then," 
said Francis, "I will have dead men for 
my followers — not living." All this is 
good enough in its place — the complete 
surrender of self — but it is only a prepara- 
tory step to something better and higher. 
When the pious young man came to Jesus, 
the first thing commanded him was the 
renunciation of riches, the goods on 
which his heart was set — self, in reality; 
but this was only preliminary to his taking 
up his cross and following his Master. 
All the Mediaeval orders made too much 
of renunciation and not enough of life. 
It was the ascetic tendency which was the 
cause of their downfall. Looking over 
their ruins, then, it is gratifying to ob- 
serve that none of that ascetic tendency 9 
the germ of disintegration, is found in 
Christian Endeavor. It was not to take 



THE JUVEX1LE BEVIVAL. 93 

life from us that Jesus came, but to give 
us life, and that more abundantly. Chris- 
tian Endeavor, then, so far as this char- 
acteristic is concerned, has no fears of 
decay. Other seeds of disease it may con- 
tain which we cannot discern, but it will 
not die of the same disease of which the 
Franciscan movement died. 

Another point of resemblance between 
these two phenomena of religious history 
is that both are eminently spiritual, and 
both disavow any interest in intellectual 
speculations. Francis would have noth- 
ing to do with learning. The Franciscan 
interest in scholastics began only after his 
death and with the decline of the move- 
ment. Dr. Clark has wisely and emphat- 
ically expressed himself on this matter: 
"It cannot be insisted on too strongly 
that the Society of Christian Endeavor is 
first and last and always a religious 
society. It has social and other features, 
but it is neither a social nor literary 
society." It has been as a spiritual move- 
ment that it has succeeded. As an educa- 
tional enterprise it would have done 



94 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

but little. The mental education of our 
youth is very well looked after; it is the 
hunger of their souls that needs satisfy- 
ing, and the success which yet awaits 
Christian Endeavor will be received only 
as it remains a spiritual force. " Spiritual 
life," says John Alzog, "even in the 
worst seasons, never entirely dies out in 
the church. When wants are felt new 
orders spring into life and supply them, 
and fresh energies are put into action." 
It is to supply a spiritual want that Chris- 
tian Endeavor has sprung into life, and 
when it ceases to supply that want its 
mission will have ended, it will be con- 
signed to the chambers of the past, and 
something else will arise to take its place. 
There are many other movements in the 
history of the church with which Chris- 
tian Endeavor might be profitably com- 
pared, but none that bear out the resem- 
blance so minutely as the Franciscan. In 
1119 nine young knights at Jerusalem 
constituted themselves into an ecclesias- 
tical order, and took a vow of service to 
the church. This was the origin of the 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 95 

orders of Knighthood which gave a relig- 
ious aspect to war and chivalry, and 
opened a field of activity for the fervor of 
religious youth. Christian Endeavor pos- 
sesses the chivalric devotion of the 
Knightly orders, without their brutality 
and licentiousness. 

In 1384, Gerard Groot, of Deventer, 
Holland, established an independent asso- 
ciation which in its practical and devo- 
tional life presents many points of simi- 
larity to Christian Endeavor. It was 
composed of both clergy and laity, and 
was called the Clergy and Brethren of the 
Common Life. The members were young 
men who "endeavored to promote Chris- 
tian piety among themselves and others, 
and worked for their end by fixed devo- 
tional exercises to which every one had 
free access." It rapidly spread through- 
out the Netherlands and Northern Ger- 
many. Its resemblance to the Young 
Men's Christian Association is still more 
striking. There has, for many reasons 
which may appear obvious enough, been 
no general movement of Protestantism 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 



with which Christian Endeavor can be 
compared, for, with the exception of the 
Sunday-school and the Young Men's 
Christian Association, there have been no 
organized ideas that could break over 
denominational wails. Religious move- 
ments in Protestantism have nearly all 
been separative or sectarian. Christian 
Endeavor is aggregative, and therefore 
stands alone. It is not but a tender 
blade. The soil, the season, the sunlight 
have favored it. No insect seems to have 
touched it. What fruit it will bear in its 
maturity we shall leave to the fancy of 
another chapter. 



V. 
THE EAR. 



1 Then the ear "—Jesus. 



" Respect the promise of youth. The plant may stop at 
the blade without flowering; at the flower without fruit- 
ing." — Confucius. 

7 (97) 



V. 
THE EAR. 



T Titherto we have been traveling on the 
* * solid ground of the past, the pres- 
ent, the known. We must in this chapter 
spread our wings upon the ether of the 
future, the unknown. We have nothing 
now to deal in but pure surmise and con- 
jecture. But the field of surmise and 
conjecture is often more fascinating and 
fruitful than the field of fact. Our eyes 
are made for looking forward. The pres- 
ent does not seem to be enough for us to 
live in. The chief activity of life is in 
that which is prospective; while our re- 
pose is in retrospect. There is a calm, a 
quiet, a restfulness in past memories. 
They may bring us sadness, but they al- 
ways bring us rest. It is like looking 
(99) 



100 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

down the winding and rugged path of the 
mountain side up which we have climbed. 
But there is a nervous, exciting uncer- 
tainty about the future, that awakes us 
into the region of wondering expectancy, 
that gives us a feeling opposite from 
repose. 

Ci 0, that a man might know 
The end of this day's business ere it come !" 

is our constant and impatient prayer as 
with troubled brows we try to peer into 
the darkness of the future. It is like look- 
ing far up before us on the mountain-side 
over which we are to clamber, to discern 
the clouded summit. The past is dreamy; 
to indulge in its recollections affects us as 
a narcotic. The future is exciting; it 
affects us as a stimulant. Like the poor, 
little, unfortunate cuckoo, man is ever 
crying, " What will become of me? What 
will become of me? " Bat the future has 
more to offer us than gloomy forebodings. 
It is an inexhaustible storehouse of the 
treasures of the Infinite. What the future 
is to us depends upon the color of our 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 101 

minds. If they are bright, sunshiny and 
hopeful, the future is our chief source of 
joy, for Hope smiles over ruin and deso- 
lation, and even "lights her torch at 
Nature's funeral pile." But to the mind 
of a somber and melancholy hue, the 
future is like the dreaded darkness of the 
night, filled with prowling beasts and un- 
canny terrors. 

But personal hopes and fears shall not 
concern us here. As wave upon wave of 
influence comes rolling upon us, driving 
us hither and thither, but with a general 
forward movement — finding ourselves no 
two moments in the same spot — the stand- 
ing question of human life is as to "where 
we are and whither we are tending." That 
question never grows antiquated, for the 
point from which it is viewed is ever 
changing. We are either hopeful or wary 
or suspicious of every tendency. We 
speculate on the natural results of a thing, 
whether it is likely to do good or evil. 
We hopefully engage in enterprises for 
years without receiving any return for our 
service, because of the promise they give 



102 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

forth. What will be the fruits of Chris- 
tian Endeavor? 

Religious life has already been greatly 
quickened and enlarged by the influence 
of Christian Endeavor, but what we have 
received is not even an earnest of the 
harvest yet to be. In this chapter we 
shall consider some of the real results 
that are sure to come in less than a gen- 
eration from this one decade of Christian 
Endeavor. The first practical result will 
be political. In a republic -democratic 
country like America, politics is king. 
From the little boy in dresses who shouts 
for his candidate before he can speak his 
own name, to the octogenarian who cast 
his first vote for Andrew Jackson, politics 
is all. It is the rule among us that all the 
time and attention which we can expend 
outside of the pursuit of our livelihood are 
devoted to politics. Religion has suf- 
fered, literature has suffered, general cul- 
ture has suffered from this all-absorbing 
subject that demands and receives the 
bulk of our leisure. Christian Endeavor 
has been able to draw the attention of 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 103 

youth from the fascination of political 
and national matters to religious themes, 
and it is high time that the stringent 
pressure of politics on the juvenile mind 
should be relieved and replaced by a health- 
ier and less dangerous force. American 
politics is in danger of becoming a system 
of wire-pulling, unscrupulous chicanery 
and unshamed dishonesty. An honest old 
man in politics may occasionally be found, 
but the younger instalment of politicians 
are for the most part a set of cunning ma- 
nipulators. It is the legitimate fruit of the 
influences of a generation back, when the 
President's chair in glittering colors was 
held before the easily corrupted imagin- 
ation of every school-boy; when to be 
member of congress, governor of a State, 
mayor of a city, or sheriff of a county was 
the noblest kind of incentive offered to 
juvenile industry. This teaching is now 
making itself felt in the wild and con- 
scienceless scramble for the richest prizes 
and the highest seats. From teachers, 
books and newspapers came the old and 
oft-repeated story of how Lincoln, Grant 



104 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

and Garfield, from humble log cabins, 
found their way to the White House. 
Our childish fancy was filled with the 
thoughts of the presidency as the end and 
aim of life. The dome of the Capitol 
haunted us in the daytime, and in our 
dreams we were driven in four-horse open 
carriages, bowing blandly, hat in hand, to 
the thronging masses on either side, 
through which the marshals of the day 
made room for our advance — with the 
mayor and the city officials in the rear. 
We declaimed, a la Daniel Webster, from 
bowery platforms, and held spell-bound 
by our matchless but imaginary eloquence 
the broad acres of mouth-open multitudes. 
It was my aim to sit in the President's 
chair, and then, Napoleonic coup d' etat, 
convert the republic into a mighty empire 
to be mine and my heirs' forever. My 
object was so solely the presidency that if 
my parents or anybody else wanted me to 
do anything, my first thought was, will it 
help me on in my race for the White 
House? How well do I remember of my 
father holding me on his knee and trying 



THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 105 

to remove from my mind that horrible de- 
lusion, and telling me of a certain Henry 
Clay, a great statesman, who said "he'd 
rather be right than be a president." 
And I remember I thought, what a fool 
that man must be! And the delusion 
never did completely leave me until I be- 
came old enough to look about me and see 
that there were ten million boys in the 
United States, all scrambling for the same 
office, and it was so clear to my mind that 
we couldn't all sit in the president's chair, 
with any sort of comfort, that I concluded 
to retire to private life. But even yet the 
old flame revives sometimes and, in a 
heated presidential campaign or nominat- 
ing convention, I feel like coming forward 
and presenting myself as a dark horse, or 
permitting some friend to state that I will 
sacrifice my personal wishes at the altar of 
the party's interests and have consented 
to take the field. 

I would not have been thus personal did 
I not think that my own experience has 
been that of the majority of American 
boys. Let us hold the words of two poets 



106 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

before the eyes of our youth as a motto 
safe and inspiring: 

"An honest man 's the noblest work of God." 

To be a man is more than to be simply 
president, senator or general. The title 
of Jesus Christ which he most loved and- 
which crowned him with the greatest 
glory was Son of Man. He was not the 
son of a king, nor the son of Rome, 
Greece nor Judea, but the simple and 
therefore sublime and perfect Man ! 

Politics is immensely attractive to the 
young, for the young are hero worshipers, 
and nothing like politics supplies the ju- 
venile fancy with heroes. But to make 
heroes of even the best of men is danger- 
ous. For in imitating them we are more 
likely to reproduce their faults than their 
virtues. Much greater is the danger in 
politics where so few men are worthy ob- 
jects of that adoration and whole-souled 
allegiance which the fervent young heart 
will pay to some person. The man who 
can carry out a shrewd piece of political 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 107 

engineering to a successful issue will al- 
ways be a fascinating personage to the 
young men who are idle spectators of the 
machinery of politics, but for all our 
boys to turn shrewd political tricksters 
would make this country a generation 
hence altogether too mean to live in. 
Boys will be what their ideals make them. 
We are rejoiced then to see that the 
young people of America are beginning 
to turn their eyes from the skirmishing 
grounds of politics, where treachery, rob- 
bery and general knavery become fami- 
liar sights to them, to the greater battle 
between sin and righteousness, where they 
may gather around the standard of One 
whom they may safely make their Ideal, 
of One who for nineteen centuries has 
been the inspiration and elevation of hu- 
manity, the glory of our race. If we be- 
come what our ideals make us, we may 
expect something nobler, grander and 
more manly in the political life of a gen- 
eration ahead than we see in that of to- 
day. God introduced to the world in 
Jesus of Nazareth an ideal picture of 



108 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

humanity. It was the crowning glory of 
the divine life in man. The enthusiastic 
devotion and imitation which that picture 
inspires are worth more to us than all the 
learning of Greece, the civic glory of 
Rome and the commerce of England; for 
the religion of Christ has raised up from 
among the barbarians of the North, men 
more learned than the Greeks; the dis- 
cipline and order of Rome have been far 
excelled; and the commerce of our na- 
tion now infinitely surpasses that of the 
whole ancient world. We do not need to 
state our belief that all this is due to the 
influence of the Christ-life in Europe, for 
it is sufficient even to know that these 
marvelous results have not been impossi- 
ble under the influence of that Life. 
Politically, then, and nationally, we have 
much to hope from the return of the 
Christian religion to a claim upon the 
hearts of the young. Let Jesus, our 
ideal Man and our Savior, be the theme 
of the young, and the world is safe. If 
" Christ for the World " is the motto of 
our lives the world is not likely to suffer. 



THE JUVENILE BE VITAL. 109 

The first blessing, then, to which we call 
attention to result from Christian En- 
deavor will be political and national in 
character. But a blessing which is sim- 
ply of a national nature should not satis- 
fy the Christian. It seems narrow and 
small for us to consider such things from 
a political standpoint, and if Christian 
Endeavor has nothing more by w r hich to 
commend itself to us, it is not worthy of 
all that has been said in its favor. But 
here is where it opens itself out to us in 
its broader view. It is cosmopolitan in 
spirit. 

From a cosmopolitan and humanitarian 
point of view there is considerable reason 
to fear from the national sentiment, as it 
seems to be manifesting itself in these 
days. When any sentiment which is not 
wide enough to take in all men becomes a 
controlling sentiment there is always dan- 
ger. The love of some men extends only 
to the bounds of their nation. They love 
their country and will die for her,but would 
rejoice in the humiliation of another. 
They will march through fire and slaught- 



110 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

er under the flaunting Stars and Stripes, 
but the banner which another man loves 
they would tear to shreds. They grow 
white with indignation and call for arms 
when they read of the Baltimore massa- 
cre in Valparaiso, but when they are 
asked about the New Orleans massacre 
they express only a calm regret or find 
refuge in making explanations. They de- 
claim with heart-thrilling feeling those 
patriotic words of Scott, 

" Breathes there a man with soul so dead," et(% 

But they would stumble if they attempted 
to quote our Lord's commission to his 
Apostles, sending them into all the ivorld 
to preach the gospel to every creature. 
They can put more spirit into the singing 
of the "Star-Spangled Banner" than 
into "Praise God, from whom all Bless- 
ings Flow." Such men we call patriotic 
men. We glorify their names. We raise 
monuments in their honor. We inscribe 
poems to commemorate their deeds. We 
fill the pages of history with records of 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. Ill 

their lives and performances. Eight and 
just though all these plaudits may be, is 
there not a grander sentiment than even 
that of patriotism — a sentiment that is 
not confined to national boundaries — a 
sentiment that takes in every child of 
God in its all-embracing love for human- 
ity? It is the cosmopolitan or humani- 
tarian sentiment caught from the heart of 
Jesus Christ, who cherished neither sec- 
tarian prejudices, national partialities 
nor special sympathies, but whose sym- 
pathy was universal, boundless as God, 
and free. Why should my brother on 
the other side of the national line be less 
entitled to my fraternal love than the 
brother on this? Is not patriotism a sec- 
tional feeling spread out over a broader 
territory? It is a noble sentiment, for 
any sentiment which is broader than self- 
ishness is noble, but it is not so noble as 
that of philanthropy. John Howard was 
a better and greater man than Lord Nel- 
son, and Jesus was greater than Alexan- 
der. Sectarian bigotry is love extended 
to the limits of a sect. Partisanship is 



112 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

love extended to the limits of a party. 
Patriotism is love extended to the bound- 
aries of a nation. The broader it grows 
the grander it becomes. Christianity is 
love universal; it takes in God and man. 
The threatening danger to Europe to- 
day is the intensifying of the national 
feeling. The national armies are growing 
stronger as patriotism grows hotter. In- 
ternational commerce and travel break 
down no national walls. The Prussian 
and the Frenchman, the Briton and the 
Russian scan each other's motions now 
with greater suspicion than ever before, 
while all Europe listens in breathless 
silence for the distant rumble of ap- 
proaching war. Let this pent-up national 
feeling and energy continue to rise until 
the floodgates give way, and a torrent like 
that which swept down the Conemaugh 
Valley will deluge the nations of Europe. 
This fear of war is not mere "news- 
paper talk." It is the talk also of cool- 
headed philosophers. Ernest Lavisse, 
professor at the Sorbonne, in a work pub- 
lished a short time ago, says that " the 



THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 113 

expectation of war is one of the principal 
phenomena of our present civilization. 
It manifests itself in the system of armed 
peace. Formerly peace wore only demi- 
armor; to-day it is armed from head to 
foot. Without any effort, by a tap of 
the telegraph, after some puffs of loco- 
motives, there is a war; and w x hat a terri- 
ble war ! . . . The feeling that a few 
dawns may suffice to illumine the desper- 
ate conflict and the death of a fatherland 
weighs heavily upon Europe. There are 
countries in which the cruel cry vae victis 
is ready to burst forth from men's 
breasts."* That something should -be 
done is plain, and whatever is done must 
come through the welding influence of 
Christianity. The chief mission of our 
religion on earth is to supplant selfish, 
narrow and sectional sentiments with a 
broad human sympathy. Early Chris- 
tianity extinguished the flame of sectional 
and national feeling and substituted for 



* Vue Generale de V Histoire Politique de V 
Europe. 



114 THE JUVENILE BEVIYAL. 

it a wide human fellowship and love. So 
potent was this cosmopolitan spirit in the 
early Church that even the inflexible ex- 
clusiveness of the Jew with its inborn 
prejudices was laid aside under the vision 
of that heavenly truth that " God is no 
respecter of persons." The barriers of 
nationality gave way before it and in 
Christ there was neither Jew nor Greek. 
The vast imperial power of Rome, which 
held the world in prison chains and 
strengthened her own nationality by ex- 
terminating other nationalities, enervat- 
ing and destroying humanity from Car- 
thage to Britain, began to crumble and 
decay under the oxygen of the Christian 
faith. Christianity must be universal in 
spirit or its essence is gone. The Church 
can become neither Greek, Roman nor 
Anglican without becoming at the same 
time unchristian. Its greatest service to 
humanity, as such, is lost when it becomes 
nationalized or specialized in any way. 
Its death knell as a Christian Church was 
rung when Constantine succeeded in ap- 
propriating it to the support of the Em- 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 115 

pire. Christian Endeavor has taken hold 
of the essence of Christianity again, and 
this has made it at once unsectarian and 
cosmopolitan. It is as much at home 
under the Union Jack as under the Stars 
and Stripes. Dr. Clark's missionary tour 
around the world is but an outward ex- 
pression of the inner spirit which governs 
the movement. The feeling of this age 
is humanitarian and cosmopolitan. This 
is shown in the great love in which such 
preachers as Channing and Beecher are 
held. The right word now spoken 
which will embody this feeling in a tangi- 
ble form will do a glorious philanthropic 
service. That word is found in the Chris- 
tian motto of the Endeavor organization. 
" One is your Master, even Christ, and all 
ye are brethren." 

Another one of the fruits which the 
next generation will enjoy from Christian 
Endeavor will be an invigorated church 
life. If the present indications count for 
much, the problem of the unchurched 
masses will then be practically solved. 
Church energy will not be so likely to be 



116 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 

expended in denominational competition, 
but it will go where it can supply the 
greatest needs. Already the young peo- 
ple of the Christian Endeavor Societies of 
many churches are doing missionary work, 
preaching the gospel to those not situated 
so as to attend regular Sunday services. 
They are building churches even in many 
towns and cities where there is greatest 
want of Christian teaching. 

We have here mentioned but a few of 
the practical or social fruits which we are 
likely to enjoy as the result of this move- 
ment — its blessing to general human soci- 
ety in bringing man nearer to his brother, 
and binding them into a stronger and 
more delightful union, and by weakening 
some of the evil elements in the social 
and political department of life. If the 
effects we have prophesied come, we shall 
have no reason to be surprised; but if 
they do not come, it will be a case of 
"the blade stopping at the flower without 
fruiting." 



VI. 

THE FULL CORN. 



■* Then the full corn in the ear."— Jesus. 

1 Unto the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ." 

— Paul, 
(117) 



VI. 
THE FULL CORN. 



Tt would be too much for us now to pre- 
* diet what will be the fullest and ripest 
fruits to fall from the Christian Endeavor 
tree in the times that are yet to be. It 
promises much, but with our limited 
knowledge of the laws of cause and effect 
we cannot know that its promises will be 
fulfilled. Our greatest hopes in Christian 
Endeavor will not be realized if it has 
nothing for us beyond a purification of 
national life and a widening of the hu- 
manitarian sentiments. As has been said 
already, its purpose is primarily and dis- 
tinctly religious. Its mission is to bring 
out the possibilities of the human soul in 
all its beauty and perfection of develop- 
ment. It is an expression of dissatisfac- 

(119) 



120 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

tion with the philosophy of the earthly, 
and a longing again for the things that 
are heavenly, eternal, and that fade not 
away. It is the return of the spirit for 
its share of attention. It is not satis- 
fied with railroads, and telegraphs, and 
real estate, and dry goods, and groceries. 
It has no quarrel with these things, but 
it calls for something more. It calls 
for faith, for hope, for love, for truth, 
for righteousness. In short, it is a cry for 
God. As the infant who wanders away 
from its mother and is lost in the forest, 
though the harmonies and beauties of 
nature are singing in its ears and danc- 
ing in its eyes, it is not contented and will 
not be comforted. The very flowers 
whose gorgeous hues would have been its 
delight, had its little hand been clasped 
in that of its mother, are a mockery to 
it in her absence. There is no melody 
in the songs of the birds without its 
mother. You may offer it rattles and 
candies and pictures in vain. It wants 
its mother. It appreciates these things 
in its mother's presence but not in her 



THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 121 

absence. We children of the Infinite 
Father are very much like the little in- 
fant. We delight in factories and farms, 
in books and colleges, in canals and steam- 
ships while we are in sight of our God, 
but the moment we have wandered far- 
ther away than we intended and are 
brought suddenly to realize that we are 
alone in the world, we then leave wealth 
and family and fame and all, and cry out 
for God. Nothing then short of God will 
satisfy us. This is the cause of all the 
pathetic pictures of religious fanaticism 
painted on the pages of our race's his- 
tory. The heathen mother who casts her 
child in the flames beneath the out- 
stretched arms of her deity; the grim 
Druid priest whetting his knife under the 
broad branches of the sacred oak for 
human sacrifice: the gloomy crusades; 
the howling and dancing dervishes; — all 
these and many more nearer us are sad 
illustrations of the human heart, having 
lost sight of God, seeking by fanatical ex- 
travagances to find him again. An era of 
religious activity is the logical consequent 



122 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 

of an era of indifference to spiritual 
things. The farther away a people have 
wandered from God and into materialism 
the more violent will be the cries and 
struggles to find him when the reaction 
sets in. A nation that would avoid the 
perils of religious fanaticism should avoid 
the extreme of spiritual indifference. 
Whoever, therefore, would preserve a 
calm, even and peaceful national relig- 
ious temper, will rejoice that the threat- 
ening materialistic tendencies have been 
opportunely arrested by a calm but fer- 
vent and intense religious feeling that has 
taken possession of the generation which 
will be responsible for the to-morrow of 
the race. The spiritual losses we have 
sustained in the deaths of nearly all our 
great poet-philosophers and preachers 
must be compensated for. The loss of 
our Emersons and Carlyles, our Tenny- 
sons and Brownings, our Longfellows, 
Lowells and Whittiers, our Beechers, 
Spurgeons and Brookses, has been a tre- 
mendous spiritual drain on the race, and 
we can ill afford to do without them at 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 123 

this time. We are losing our Emersons 
and getting Edisons instead. How long 
we could keep up such a trade would be 
hard to tell. Even now the question is 
being asked by the practical mind, What 
good is philosophy? Of what practical 
value are literature and dead languages? 
How does a study of Homer, Milton or 
Shakespeare enable one to make any bet- 
ter living — except as he intends to teach 
those things? These are some of the 
questions now commonly asked which 
show how completely materialistic con- 
siderations are beginning to control our 
thinking and acting. The tendency which 
they reveal is a pernicious one. 

The next questions to be asked will be, 
Of what practical value are culture and 
virtue? Indeed, too scrupulous consci- 
entiousness is oftentimes unprofitable in 
business and politics. To lie possesses a 
commercial value. What use have w^e for 
religion? This view of things has crept 
into the church. How may I make 
church membership a means of advance- 
ment, of prosperity to me? How may I 



124 THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 

turn my prayers and my long face and my 
Aniens and my Sabbath street-carried 
Bible into' dollars and cents? Do we un- 
derstand, therefore, that when religion 
comes to possess no commercial value it 
is to be abandoned? Then we will come 
to ask, What profit is there in love — love 
for father and mother, for brother and 
sister, for wife and children?' We can 
easily see that this tendency carried out 
to its logical issue would land man again 
among the brutes. This is a retrogres- 
sion. Instead of falling backward toward 
the protozoa, we should press on to the 
continuance and completion of the evolu- 
tionary process, until we come in the 
unity of faith and the knowledge of God's 
Son unto that perfect manhood, unto the 
fullness of the measure of the stature of 
Christ. The Christian Endeavor move- 
ment is, therefore, a refreshing sign of 
our present spiritual vitality. 

The one Convention held in New York 
City in 1892 is an event for future histo- 
rians of American life to study. It was 
an epoch in the history of our nation. It 



THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 125 

calmed the fears of the thinking minds 
that were alarmed for the spiritual future 
of the race. It quieted the loud claims of 
the enemies of our faith that Christianity 
was losing its hold on the people. Alto- 
gether it gave quite a new coloring to the 
general condition of things. It was one 
of these needed surprises that come now 
and then as regenerating influences to a 
nation. In accordance with this event 
many have been compelled to readjust 
and modify their philosophy of things. 

The highest and best results of this 
wonderful movement will be to fill up the 
mould of humanity — to lead man closer to 
his God, the fountain of all that is divine 
in man — 

" That God, which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 



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